SEO Web Design by BardicMedia.com

I first started learning about using video and social bookmarking to get loads of free traffic without expensive pay-per-click advertising from Jeff Johnson. He demonstrated how he quickly made top 10 ranking for highly competitive keywords in Google and other search engines by placing videos he made using inexpensive tools like Traffic Geyser. The program is very cool, and I see evidence of it’s use by most of the top marketing bloggers I follow.

Here’s why the video and web2.0 marketing strategy is so popular…over half of web traffic is now video and 12% goes to YouTube! If you “keyword load” your videos, they’ll show up in Google faster than any other way I have seen, other than PPC advertising (which can be costly). The main cost of the video strategy is production time and the time it takes to submit the videos to dozens and dozens of sites. That cost is now lower than you could ever imagine with Traffic Geyser.

Traffic Geyser is a marketing publishing platform that will broadcast a video to over 35 video locations (YouTube, Google Video, Revver, iFilm, etc), social bookmarking sites, blog posts, and podcast directories with the click of a button—all linking back to your web site.

The new version of Traffic Geyser, features a completely redone interface, more power and many new features:

- more places to submit to

- An “intelligent submission system” that warns you ahead of time if something you’re about to submit will fail

- A progress bar to show the status of your files uploading to our server

- A greatly simplified remote upload feature

- Dramatic speed increases due to a sweeping change in our database structure and a fleet of new servers at a new data center

- Brand-new, updated training videos

- New help files and a user manual

- A new toll-free telephone recording system (it’s already functioning)

- The new Slideshow Creator

The reason why you need to start using video in your marketing mix today is this:  you’ll be  practically guaranteed that you can communicate and present to over 1 billion internet connected users and 2.2 billion mobile phone users.

What are you waiting for?

In developing our FaceBook Marketing Plan, we have been reviewing Business Pages on Facebook to see what is works best. It’s clear that developing an application is a huge part of many success stories. Take for example the most famous Facebook business success story TravBuddy.com Countries Visited Map.

Unless you are an application developer, you’d be tempted to be disappointed to learn that aps can be so critical to success on Facebook. I know, you’re thinking “great, another thing I have to hire a developer for!”

That’s what I thought until I learned about tools that you can use to mash up existing content with easy tools like Widgetbox.com, Yahoo Pipes, and Popfly. What is so cool about this trend is that it is so easy to get started with these aps, and developers are still relatively inexpensive.

What’s critical is for people to get out there and start playing on Facebook now, learning about what works and discovering what your audience wants. Coming up with a simple concept that plays on the natural organic trends of the network you are building is critical. Watch this video to hear Lance Tokuda of RockYou.com describe how he came up with one of the most successful aps on Facebook and how he is literally building an online empire across multiple social platforms:

When someone enters keywords into their favorite search engine, they are trying to do one of two things:

1) solve a problem
2) answer a question

By “pushing” out content in the form of blogs, podcasts, white-papers, articles, and instructional videos, you “pull” in customers looking for solutions or answers. Buy providing quality free content that helps them with the problem they are looking to solve or question they seek an answer to, you pre-sell yourself or your company. This pulls the prospect closer to you and shortens the decision-making cycle for them to choose to do business with you.

While this is a well-know tactic that many have blogged about before, there is an art to designing campaigns that effectively use this approach to gain permission to continue these conversations in a way that results in increased business. While most businesses can launch a blog themselves, it takes a trained marketing professional or lots of trial and error to leverage the value of these “push” content efforts. The best approach for most businesses is to budget for development of a Web 2.0 marketing strategy by a consultant who has experience with website conversions. Maintaining a blog, podcast, or article series can be very time-consuming, so to get the kind of ROI you have been hearing all the buzz about with these tactics, you need a plan to attract and retain an audience for this communication.

Social networks that are now the backbone of Web2.0 allow your prospects to locate you and your website by the principle of “birds of a feather flock together.” Tags are small clusters of keywords that allow members of these communities to locate others interested in a similar set of subjects to network with, usually by adding people to their list of friends or through groups that share a common interest. If you or your company are well represented on networks like linkedin.com, facebook.com or myspace.com (which one you use most will depend on your industry), then you are also pre-selling by showing who you are associated with. You want to use profiles in these spaces to demonstrate affinity with thought leaders, innovators, and other impressive people and organizations in your industry that help to convey your style of approach to solving problems and finding answers.

Social Media Marketing is the official term for using what has become known as Web2.0 or social media to promote your business. Understanding what this means for your business starts with revisiting how you see the web. One of my favorite books on the evolution of online spaces is Cluetrain Manifesto. It’s where I first began rethinking the web and began to understand that the web is really a set of clustered conversations. Back in 1997 when our small team started designing websites, we saw the web as a series of billboards or brochures, a one-way communication. What Web 2.0 means for your business is the arrival of tools that make it easy to transform your “brochure-ware” or web 1.0 website into a dynamic tool for engaging in a conversation with your community.

The “community” of website visitors you attract is made up not only of your customers and prospects, but also of peers and possible joint venture partners, bloggers, reporters, and other people in a position to influence the opinions of your customers and prospects, and even your suppliers and vendors. You get to start a conversation with them that will not only bring you more business, but it positions you to attract exactly the kind of customers you want to work with the most.